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North Royalton, Strongsville to Receive Grants For Electric Vehicle-Charging Stations

North Royalton, Strongsville to Receive Grants For Electric Vehicle-Charging Stations

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NORTH ROYALTON, Ohio : The city has received a $15,000 Ohio Environmental Protection Agency grant that will help pay for an electric vehicle-charging station outside North Royalton Family YMCA, at State and Wallings roads.

In addition, the city won a grant from the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency to install a second electric vehicle-charging station outside City Hall on State Road south of Ohio 82. The amount for the NOACA grant has not yet been specified.

The City of North Royalton will install an electric vehicle-charging station outside the North Royalton Family YMCA at State and Wallings roads.

“There is a growing need for these stations as more consumers buy electric vehicles,” Tom Jordan, the city’s community development director, told cleveland.com.

“Grants are being made available to local governments because it’s easier (in some cases) to find land on government property for charging stations as opposed to commercial landowners, who would have to make their properties open to the general public, and not everyone is ready to do that,” Jordan said.

In March, the Ohio EPA announced that it had awarded $3.3 million in grants to support installation of more than 500 electric vehicle-charging stations in more than 170 locations in 22 counties. In Cuyahoga County alone, EPA grants will help fund charging stations in 22 locations.

One of those EPA grants, for $15,000, will help pay for a charging station outside Cleveland Clinic’s Strongsville Family Health & Surgery Center on Ohio 82 in front of SouthPark Mall.

Ohio EPA grants will fund charging stations at several other Cuyahoga County locations, including Beechmont Towers Apartments in Woodmere; Cleveland Clinic’s Independence Family Health Center in Independence, Euclid Hospital and Beachwood Family Health & Surgery Center; Kia of Bedford; Hyundai of Bedford; and in Bedford’s historical district.

Ohio EPA grants also went toward charging stations at Lakewood’s western gateway; South Euclid City Hall; the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo; Legacy Village in Lyndhurst; the Warrensville Heights branch library; the Huntington Park Garage in downtown Cleveland; Cleveland Hopkins International Airport; a recreation center in Cleveland’s Ward 1; and parking garages in University Circle and The Van Aken Center in Shaker Heights.

The Ohio EPA is planning to announce a second round of grants for fast-charging stations later this year. Money for the Ohio grants came from a legal settlement between the U.S. EPA and Volkswagen.

The settlement involved allegations that Volkswagen between 2009 and 2016 violated the Clean Air Act by installing devices in their vehicles designed to cheat on federal emissions tests.

Meanwhile, NOACA is partnering with seven communities — North Royalton, Strongsville, Cleveland, Brook Park, Berea, Brunswick and Medina — to install charging stations along the Interstate 71 corridor, said NOACA spokesperson Gayle Godek. The total estimated cost of NOACA’s grant program is $3 million.

“Although the exact number of chargers at each site has not yet been determined and the overall number of chargers is not yet known, we are estimating implementation at more than 45 sites across the NOACA five-county region,” Godek told cleveland.com in an email.

The Strongsville station, funded by NOACA, might be located outside the city’s administrative offices on Foltz Parkway. Other stations are tentatively slated for Berea Municipal Court, the Brook Park Recreation Department, the West Side Market in Cleveland and Brunswick City Hall.

Also, NOACA will help fund three electric vehicle-charging stations in and around Medina Public Square.

Godek said the next steps for NOACA’s charging station program are to evaluate each potential site for feasibility, scope, cost and schedule — a process that will include visits to the proposed locations — and then finalize the list of sites.

Funding for the NOACA electric vehicle-charging station program is coming from the agency’s Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program.

In North Royalton, Jordan said he hopes to have the station funded by the Ohio EPA installed by late fall. The city will buy the equipment from ChargePoint, a California-based company with a distributor in Cleveland, and have another company — the identity of which hasn’t been determined — install the station outside the YMCA.

The total estimated cost of the YMCA charging station is $25,000. The city will own the station and users would pay for the electricity as they charge their vehicles. Jordan said the city will not try to make money off the station, only recover its costs.

Source: cleveland

Anand Gupta Editor - EQ Int'l Media Network